No Man’s Blog

I was invited last week to the institute of social psychology at the LSE to talk about "the new landscape of marketing communications". It was quite exciting for me to go back to the place that was my home for almost 5 years and talk about my new life and passions.

I gave them the expected stuff about the ways in which social-technological developments alter the balance of power and force marketing communications to re-invent itself. My overall argument was that we’re heading towards better relations between markets and consumers where bad products/brands won’t be able to be disguised behind clever marketing, witty taglines or flashy advertising and we can see a growing trend towards authenticity (truth and beauty) in communications.

You had to see the resistance! Put aside the fact that the audience were for a large extant left- leaning, Neomi Klein sort of a fans, there is still some things to learn from their perception of marketing - not as academics but as ordinary people/consumers.

Some of the arguments I’ve heard:  "marketing is essentialy evil", "advertising is loud and intrusive" "marketing is corrupt and manipulative", "Brands and corporations took over our public spheres" etc. Not that I didn’t know or feel it myself but still, the level of loathing and distrust between consumers and marketing communications is immense. People are just fed up with the sleaze and bullshit that governed marketing communications in the past 20 years (yes, we are making a generalization here but the fact that some brands are ‘good’ doesn’t change the overall perception of marketing as evil)

But there was some interesting argument that I took with me and was thinking about in the last few days. Martin argued (I hope that I re-state his argument accurately) that the appearing of a ‘jargon of authenticity’  in marketing and public relations, which are essentially opportunistic exercises, is very problematic and deserve scrutiny. Opportunism and existential authenticity  are moral concepts in tension. Authenticity, he argued, manifests itself persistently in the face of adversity; where the opportunist only sees an opportunity to change tack.

I think that if you leave for a second your critical views on consumerism society and the effective economy, you cannot dismiss the fact that markets and marketing where here from the dawn of humanity and as Uri once said, "Marketing communications, specifically, remain one of the most prolific, complex and powerful aspects of human sign activity."

Therefore, you cannot, to my view, regard marketing - a primal human activity / interaction - as essentially moraly flawed. From the early days of civilisation people were involved in production and trade of products and goods so that cannot be inherently immoral. But it might be true that in the 20th century, especially the last 40 years or from the beginning of mass commuications, marketing, to a large extant has become manipulative, corrupt and therefore unethical.

We now know that there is a growing trend towards authenticity and back to the good old days where if you have a good product, people will tell each other about it and you can expect good business… I want to believe that marketing communications is undergoing a real change towards openness, transparency, dialogue and enrichment and that authenticity, whether forced upon or genuinely pursued, will help consumers to regain trust and better relations with brands - after all they are here to stay so at least we should have some fun together…

UPDATE: In the same vein, read this thoughtful rant on brands in today’s Guardia

(pic via)

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